Monday, August 4, 2014

August first, was a terrifying
day at work. One of my colleagues, after reading the news that the 72 hour
ceasefire between Israel and Hamas had abruptly ended, according to Israeli
sources, because of the “kidnapping” of an Israeli soldier, became angry and made
some brutal statements.

He said that “if you
don’t have the power to fight Israel, then you should sit down, stop
complaining and live your life”, to which I calmly responded that “there is no
life in Gaza”. He then shockingly stated that “they deserved to be killed” and
argued that leaders like Stephen Harper were right in calling for their
destruction (I don’t think that even Stephen Harper, the staunch Conservative
and pro-Israel PM of Canada, could publicly voice such an opinion).

I told him, it is
clear example of discrimination: to protect the life of Israeli citizens and
soldiers and prevent Hamas of continuing their military operations, you ask for
the massacre of Hamas militants. Such an statement when, in last 26-27 days,
more than 1600 Palestinians have been killed, most of them civilians and among
them hundreds of children, for me, was intolerable.

I was not able to stay
silent; I needed to show him that I was extremely upset about the brutal
statement and that I did not want to hear such comments again. After 20 minutes
or half an hour, I told him to “please never again talk to me about massacring other
people”.

In response he said
his judgment is realistic and that I am just a dreamer. I told him it is my
choice (1).

I am horrified about talking
about politics or even humanitarian issues with such a person. I did not
continue.

Normally, we think that
the people sitting beside us, passing us in the streets or living in our neighbourhood
cannot be cruel. Hannah Arendt, in her writings about “banality of evil”, is
pointing exactly to this misconception. She is trying to show us how a “good
German”, one that listens to Beethoven and Mozart, reads the poems of Goethe
and Shriller, falls in love, loves their kids, says hello to their neighbours
and colleagues, are able to commit such horrible crimes (She was talking about
genocide of the Jews, Gipsies and massacre of communists, social democrats and
whoever stood against fascism). She is explaining that these terrible crimes,
for many ordinary citizens, became an administrative and technical matter, not
a humanitarian issue.

Arendt remind us that occurrences of horrible
crimes (like the holocaust), not only need a government or authority capable of
organizing and encouraging the crime, but also a transformation in the
consensus of many citizens, who participate in the crime (by killing others, by
supporting the killings or even by remaining silent), is necessary. For them hating
and eventually killing “others” became like killing germs or destroying a disease.

My colleague’s brutal
statement endorsing massacre against Hamas militants (an organization born out
of the crisis which continues to benefit from the crisis) which each time
effectively ends in the massacre of the residents of Gaza is an example of
making terrible crimes a simple and ordinary action. It is horrifying that a
citizen of a democratic country is endorsing and asking for such a crime.

Israel, either as a
prison guard (if I consider Gaza as a big open-air prison) or an occupying
power (if I consider Gaza as an occupied territory), under international law,
does not have the right to knowingly target and kill the residents of Gaza. Israel
is responsible for the lives of the residents of Gaza.

In my opinion, it is our
responsibility to unconditionally condemn the perpetual siege/blockade of the
territory (which not only causes a humanitarian catastrophe, but also empowers
the extremist groups) and the massacre that Israel is currently perpetrating in
Gaza.